New York makes you self-absorbed, which is like a gift and a curse at the same time.
Because you have to be focused on yourself, but so many people are ignored along the way.
This is my New York fashion week walk, spring, summer, fall.
I'm constantly finding meaning in inanimate objects in the city that I closely identify with.
Like, gross puddles that look like cigarette butts. I relate to them intensely.
I consider myself a multi-disciplinary artist.
I not only am an actress, but I also am a painter.
I've been working in movie theater since I was 16 and I finally came out as gay at 18, the first day of college.
I got to college and they took my picture and right when the camera clicked in the film, you know,
when the camera clicked and the shot had been taken, I was out as gay. That's how I came out.
And I introduced myself. People were like, hey, what's your name? I'm like, it doesn't matter. I'm gay.
That's all you need to know. I identify as transgender.
And the hardest part of the coming out experience with that has been visibility for me.
If I send my headshot in to one of these agencies that's casting for female 18 to 25 student,
I'm not going to be considered because I'm not passing with that gender.
I want to be empowered by the term actress. I want people to ask me, are you an actress?
I don't want people to ask me, are you an actor?
And then me having to explain that I'm an actress and then they refute that by saying everyone's an actor now.
Because when you're trans and you're waking up to that realization every single day
and you see other people making very harsh reactions to that,
how are you supposed to not harness your own feelings of wanting to not live in your body?
I'm not going to play a straight man or a gay man on film.
I'm going to play some type of woman and that's political.
It's the same as being apart to pieces of one.
